To spare you hours and hours trawling through Wikipedia and worrying about whether most of the material contained in it is a load of shite, here are the verified Painspotters since time in memorial (well a few at least, as this could go on forever). And to make it easy for you they are listed in chronological order and where known, their pet Pain has been included.

This list has been officially endorsed by a number of learned bodies, including The British Library, The Catholic Church, The Bexhill-on-Sea Society of glass-eyed Trainspotters and of course The Masons, and where the earthly remains of any of the Pains mentioned below can be found their residual DNA is being used for further research into isolating and understanding the Painspotting Gene and whether or not it can be treated with massive amounts of mind bending drugs.

You will also be delighted to know that the long list of famous Painspotters is also being used on a number of social science degrees and MBA programmes throughout the world. In light of the significance of the Painspotting to human kind (far more critical than the discovery of fire or the landing on the Moon according to Oxford academics) a Painspotting degree (with honours) will be launched simultaneously in the USA and UK in 2012 and for those interested in gaining a PhD in a painspotting related topic they should contact the dean of their particular academic institution (EU and UN funding is available).

Date	Who	Pet Pain
4.5 Billion BC	God	People who ate apples
28000 BC	Proto-man	Hirsute men and women
2000 BC	The Early Greeks	Anyone who couldn't read
1200 BC	Moses	The Egyptians
1200 BC	Pharaoh	Moses
640 BC	Plato	None, he defined the whole Painspotting thing
317 BC	Alexander the Great	The known world
0	King Herod	Babies
30	Pontius Pilot	Trouble makers, you know, like Jesus
43	The Ancient Britons	Sandal wearing Romans
793	The Saxons	Anyone with a beard, especially the Vikings
999	The known world	The end of the world and the last judgement
1000	The known world	None - all was well (the only time mind)
1095	Pope Urban II	Anyone who failed to join the Crusade
1187	Saladin	The Crusaders
1215	The Nobles	King John
1223	Ghengis Kahn	Foreign tourists
1346	Edward III	The French
1356	The Black Prince	The French
1381	Wat Tyler	Toffee-nosed tax evaders
1415	Henry V	The French
1490	Hernando Cortes	Anyone with more gold than him
1536	Anne Boleyn	Fashion victims like Henry VIII
1605	Guido Fawkes	People that blanked him
1644	Oliver Cromwell	Gravy train politicians
1779	Ned Ludd	The occasional loom
1789	Voltaire	Almost everyone
1789	Marie Antoinette	Peasants
1880	Nietzsche	Happy people
1914	Gavrilo Princip	People with feathers in their caps
1938	Stalin	Tall people and Trotsky
1939	The world	The Germans
1960	Women	Women who wore bras and of course, men
1960	Men	Women who wore bras
1977	The Labour Party	Anyone with an income of more than 50p
1979	Punks	Disco music (of course)
1986	IBM	Microsoft
1999	The known world	Computers and those who programmed them
2000	The known world	Computers and those who programmed them
2008	The known world	Bankers
2009	New Labour	Anyone with an income of more than 75p
2010	The whole of Britain	New Labour
2012	The known world	The Mayans
6 billion AD	The known world	God